School Start Times Adjusted for 2019-2020 Academic Year

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Ever since Gates Middle School made the great switch to the new campus, middle schoolers have been starting school at 7:25 a.m., while high school students start school at 8:10 a.m. This 45-minute difference could be much smaller if the two schedules were aligned, but traffic concerns caused Gates to start earlier.

For the past two years, a committee led by the superintendent has been researching school start times and considering how to align the middle school and high school schedules. In particular, parents of middle school students advocated for starting middle school later.

During the Monday, May 6th Scituate School Committee meeting, the committee members voted to approve the Start Times Committee recommendations and shift the school start times during the 2019-2020 academic year.

Beginning in the fall, Gates will start at 8:00 a.m., representing a 35-minute shift to a later time. The high school will start five minutes later, beginning at 8:15 a.m. Elementary schools will start at 8:55, which is also a five-minute change. Under this new plan, middle school and high school students will ride the bus together, creating a two-tiered bus system in Scituate.

Clearly, the middle school students are the winners of the change, as they will be getting more valuable sleep. Although this 5-minute change may seem insignificant for high school students, this will definitely change the mornings of middle school students and their parents for the better. Some high school students may need to drive their siblings to school

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